Reid: Impasse due to Planned Parenthood funding; Boehner: It’s about spending
Video: Speaker of the House John Boehner addresses the impending government shutdown from Capitol Hill shortly before 11 a.m. on Friday morning . (April 8)
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Video: Shortly after 11:00 a.m. Friday morning, Sen. Harry Reid voices his concern that GOP negotiations over a budget have come down to women's health issues.
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Gallery: Government shutdown: Democrats and Republicans have so far failed to reach an agreement on the 2011 federal budget, increasing the likelihood of the first government shutdown in more than 15 years.
Friday morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said that negotiators had come very close to a budget agreement overnight. But, Reid said, the deal broke up in a dispute over funding for the group Planned Parenthood.
That organization provides abortions, but is not permitted to use federal money to pay for them. Instead, it receives federal funds for other women’s health services, including screenings for breast and cervical cancer, HIV testing, treatment of sexually transmitted diseases and checks for high blood pressure and cholesterol.
Republicans, who say federal funding for those services frees up more private funds for abortions, offered to replace federal funding for women’s health programs with block grants to individual states. Congressional aides said Reid and President Obama objected to this proposal because they believed it would allow Republican governors to deny public money not only to Planned Parenthood, but also to other women’s health groups.
“Republicans are asking me to sacrifice my wife’s health, my daughter’s health and my nine granddaughters’ health,” Reid said. “I’m not going to be part of that. I won’t do it. As a legislator I’m very frustrated. As an American I’m appalled. As a husband, a father and a grandfather I’m personally offended.”
But House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) — the lead Republican in the budget negotiations — quickly disputed Reid’s account. Boehner said the impasse in negotiations was not about policy. Instead, he said, negotiators cannot agree on the overall level of spending cuts in the proposed deal.
“There’s only one reason that we do not have an agreement as yet, and that issue is spending. We’re close to a resolution on the policy issues,” Boehner said in a brief appearance at the Capitol. “But I think the American people deserve to know when will the White House, and when will Senate Democrats, get serious about cutting spending?”
A senior Republican aide dismissed Reid’s charges as empty “sound and fury,” saying that rather than denying women’s health funding, Republicans wanted to allow states to distribute the money as they see fit.
It was not a hopeful beginning to Capitol Hill’s day on the brink.
The two sides are fighting over a relatively small piece of the $1 trillion-plus federal budget. Reid has said that negotiators were near an agreement to cut $38 billion from current spending levels — $5 billion more in cuts than they had discussed last week.
But, if they cannot forge a pact by midnight, the entire government will run out of money and shut down.
Federal agencies have begun preparing more than 800,000 federal workers nationwide for a possible closure, letting them know whether they should show up for work on Monday morning if the government runs out of funds.
The next news might come after 1 p.m., when House Republicans emerge from a meeting in the Capitol basement. Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and other GOP leaders are expected to brief reporters after that session.
On Thursday, congressional leaders had two Oval Office sit-downs with Obama. Staff-level negotiations stretched on until 3 a.m. Friday.
“Because the machinery of the shutdown is necessarily starting to move, I expect an answer in the morning,” Obama said late Thursday. The White House then canceled Obama’s plans to travel to Indianapolis on Friday. But in the morning, the answer was: no deal.
The White House said Obama spoke in separate phone calls to Boehner and Reid on Friday. The two-sentence statement did not say how the administration viewed the progress of the talks, adding only that “discussions between the two leaders and the White House aimed at reaching a budget agreement are continuing.”
Obama remained out out of public view, huddling with advisers.
On Friday morning, Reid was the first to offer his explanation of the breakdown, talking to reporters at the Capitol.
“We agreed on a number last night. They can spin this any way they want,” Reid said. “The number’s done.”
The problem, Reid said, were the “riders,” or policy provisions that effectively target specific agencies or programs, that House Republicans wanted included in a deal.
“In the presence of the president of the United States, we went through those that they, the Republicans, felt were most important,” Reid said. “They were all resolved, except the rider dealing with Planned Parenthood.”
Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider. The organization receives millions of federal dollars for non-abortion services for low-income people, including breast exams and Pap smears, cholesterol and blood pressure screenings, family planning and contraceptives.
But conservatives have questioned the integrity of the group, and argued that — even if federal funding doesn’t pay for abortions — it frees up other money that could.
In lieu of a provision defunding Planned Parenthood, Republicans this week proposed an alternative that would change the way federal Title X funding for women’s health programs is distributed, according to senior congressional aides.
Currently, Title X funding is provided in federal grants to women’s health organizations, including Planned Parenthood. Under the Republicans’ alternative proposal, federal Title X funds would be sent to states in the form of block grants and it would be up to state governments to distribute those funds to health groups.
With the impasse unresolved, Boehner urged the Senate and Obama to approve a one-week budget extension that passed the GOP-controlled House on Thursday. It includes full funding for the Defense Department as well as $12 billion in cuts to other agencies.
But the measure has no chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate, in part because it contains a restriction on funding for abortions in the District. Obama has said he would veto the legislation.
Reid said he would propose his own measure to fund the government for one week more. If Senate Republicans filibuster Reid’s bill, and the government shuts down, Democrats will be able to blame the GOP.
The fight appears to have come down to a test of political will between Boehner on one side and Reid and Obama on the other. Neither side wants to be perceived as the one who caves. And both see an advantage in waiting until the last minute to strike an agreement.
But what if the two sides miscalculate, and a shutdown comes?
Both lawmakers and the White House could be tarred with an even more damaging perception: These are the people who couldn’t manage to keep the government open.
Democrats and Republicans are both eager to move past this argument and get to other disagreements with far greater impact, including debates over whether to allow the U.S. Treasury to borrow money beyond the current $14.3 trillion debt limit and over the GOP’s ambitious proposed budget for 2012.
Congressional leaders consider the current talks a dry run for the battles to come.
“Understand that this process that we’re in is likely to be repeated a number of times this year,” Boehner told reporters Thursday. “I think everyone is taking their time, trying to get this right.”
Staff writer Perry Bacon Jr. contributed to this report.
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